“Cosi fan tutte”. And you?

“Cosi fan tutte”. And you?

Così fan tutte is an opera in Italian by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The work premiered in Vienna

Advertising Industry: Financial results for third Quarter of 2017 have just been released:

Google in the US reported that revenue hit $27.77bn (vs. £21.2bn, i.e. +31%) in 3d Quarter, while profits were up to $6.73bn from $5.06bn in the same period last year, marking a 33% increase. And we also see an impeccable 2001-2016 income chart above.

WPP (WPP.L) in LONDON (Reuters) cut its sales expectations for the third time this year and said net sales would not grow in 2017 (Were 55.2 Bil. pounds in total 2016).

Rivals Publicis Groupe and Interpublic have both announced weaker than expected Q3 results.

Conclusions from above:

In Advertising spending: We are witnessing a steady shift towards Digital media. Here we have two good reasons and a fake: 1.Traditional advertisers address more and more niche market segments, where digital options have a clear targeting advantage. 2. Small businesses and local events have for the first time the option to play the media card to reach wider audiences (example: Bazaar organized by a school). 3. “Cosi fan tutte” i.e. shifting budgets to digital because … everyone else does so!

At the same time though, in Digital Advertising, questions about metrics still hover: There are too many metrics, but most of them are soft: Impressions, clicks, likes etc, with no solid connection to business results, at the same time that viewabilty is a big question mark. Procter & Gamble and Unilever, as reported on BUSINESS INSIDER, have both aggressively pushed for more transparency in digital media, threatening to hold back, unless the system is cleaned up. Both P&G and Unilever appear today to have reduced their digital spending and the number of sites they buy on. MediaRadar, an advertising intelligence agency, reports that P&G’s ad spend dropped 41% YoY, while Unilever’s dropped 59%. And while P&G ran ads on 1,459 sites between January and May 2016, that number dropped to 978 sites in the same period in 2017–a decline of 33%. Unilever, on the other hand, advertised on 606 sites and fell to 540 sites in same period 2017, representing an 11% drop.

“Advertisers are demanding more transparency from agency, publisher and technology partners, and given problems for both Facebook and YouTube, those demands have only grown louder in in recent months,” said Todd Krizelman, CEO & Co-Founder of MediaRadar. “According to our data, this has caused a handful of major advertisers to materially reduce the number of sites they buy on, and their budgets too.”

What to do, especially in small markets like Greece & Cyprus where metrics are poorer and marketing case studies rarely get the publicity light:

The Local view: Start from the above. But don’t underestimate the basics! Especially in markets where Television is still the King! Every time you are on air, a very large percentage of viewers will search for you on their mobiles and tablets. And among those searching, the percentage of potential clients is elevated. Are you sure that what they are going to see is optimized? The same way you need your independent media auditor to certify that best practices and benchmarks were matched on TV, the same way you need him to verify that your site (i) complies with the ever growing list of technical prerequisites and (ii) is content optimized. Below, the start of a technical example Web Site Audit / scratching the surface only: